Yes, it is a Mac. And I do empty the trash before I load the player. What I am trying to do though is sync without having to clear the files from the player. With an iPod, syncing will make changes without reimporting files already on it. It only changes or adds new playlists or new songs from iTunes. Pono tries to reload everything from my library onto the player and I get the "30GB too much" message when all I had done was create a new playlist from existing songs. It would be like having to restore an iPod every time it syncs to iTunes. A lengthy process.
